What's your favorite fiver troupe?

[Nate the Great]

If you need a little background on troupes, you can visit http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/ but I'll just quote the relevant definition:

"Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. If a trope gets used too much, it becomes clichéd. The word cliché means stereotyped and trite. In other words, dull and uninteresting."

The fivists here have come up with a number of conventions that have become accepted as useful to use when writing fivers, and thus have become expected.

We can also use this thread to promote troupes that we want to see more of, as well as bringing up running gags between fivers that we enjoy.

[Starpaul20]

My favorite would have to be 'Characters mocking the plot they're in' (this is what I voted for) followed by 'Boneheaded decisions by villians'. :)

[Nate the Great]

Oh yeah, that's a good one. A favorite of mine is the "that's a stupid explanation, but that must be what happened" gag.

Any particular boneheaded decision you especially like?

[mudshark]

Chili. :D

[Zeke]

Interesting thread, Nate. But how can you have read that page you linked us to and still be consistently misspelling "trope"?

[e of pi]

Interesting thread, Nate. But how can you have read that page you linked us to and still be consistently misspelling "trope"?
I suspect that it's either a simple error, a bad auto-correct, or some sort of humor too subtle for mere mortals.

[Nate the Great]

Um, I suppose I could call it a preference for the older-style spelling, where I think "troupe" would be fully acceptable. I could, but I can't. I suppose I could also say "I'm an engineer, not a grammatician!", but then again, I just did. :)

Chalk it up to post-college spelling slide. Then again, maybe I've devoted so much of my mind to finding fault in the grammar of others that spelling has to take a back seat.

[Nate the Great]

So as of this time "characters mocking the plot they're in" remains number one. I'm not in the least surprised.

Nor is Gak in second place surprising. It's gotta be one of our favorite sound effects. I just regret that Kablazmo isn't used more often by the fivists. It's such a shame that the DS9 episodes that I've fived really don't have any ships blowing up, or I'd use it myself.

[GreenFire1]

It's gotta be mocking plots. Of course, I Five Rockman EXE, and it's just too easy to do that. Where else can you find giant psychedelic radiation fields that, when combined with an appropriate data chip, cause ordinary humans to sprout armor and grow beam sabers or guns on their hands?

(Zeke and Mav know exactly what I'm talking about, and for the rest of you, I swear I'm not making this up.)

[Sa'ar Chasm]

I'm a little surprised you didn't include "geeky references" or "excreable puns" among the options.

Note: turns out "excreable" doesn't mean quite what I thought it did, but its actual meaning will do in this context.

[Nate the Great]

Re geeky references: Okay, yeah, that should've been there.

Re puns: Ditto. Maybe I should recalibrate the poll, huh?

I've seen Megaman NT Warrior, so I've seen my share of Crossfusions. Still don't get how they're supposed to help. I think that the implication is that the closer the link and the shorter the reaction between NetOp and NetNavi, the better the results.

Oh, and remember that since all of that stuff is holographic, it's no weirder than the monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh.

[mudshark]

I'm a little surprised you didn't include "geeky references" or "excreable puns" among the options.

Note: turns out "excreable" doesn't mean quite what I thought it did, but its actual meaning will do in this context.
Hm, I had to look that one up, and yeah, it could work. I thought maybe you were going for "execrable" but hey, I learned a new word today instead. Heh. :D

I still think that "chili" should have been a poll option.

[Nate the Great]

Learning new words is always good. Heck, I never even knew that a word like "predicate" existed until Mr. Morton came along.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

I thought maybe you were going for "execrable" but hey, I learned a new word today instead.

I was. I just couldn't make the spelling look right.

[Nate the Great]

The best I can come up with is "excruciating," but ... uh, yeah, that's all I had to say here... :)

[mudshark]

Heck, I never even knew that a word like "predicate" existed until Mr. Morton came along.
Never heard of him.

[Tate]

Mr. Morton? He's the subject of this sentence (and what the predicate says, he does).

[Zeke]

Hey, if I wrote a fiver that used everything mentioned in this thread, would it be Everybody-Gets-a-Trope Day?

[Nate the Great]

Oh yeah, Schoolhouse Rock is a classic.

[Mr. Richardson]

Good ol... GAK! *Falls over and dies from saying it.*

[Nate the Great]

Har har har. What a stupid plot! :)

[PointyHairedJedi]

GAK, I'd have to say. More fivers should have NINJA! in them too, I think.

[Nate the Great]

One of these days I'm going to have to use Oobleck instead of Gak as the dying word.

[mudshark]

Bartholomew, is that you?

[Nate the Great]

No, but I hear a Who! :)

Kudos (and some granola bars while you're at it :)) for the reference catch.

Actually, I'm particularly fond of the more obscure Seuss books.

[mudshark]

Obscure?

[Zeke]

It's not obscure to a Seuss fan, but it would be to most people. Only a few of Seuss's books have reached the level of pop-culture icon (The Cat in the Hat, The Grinch, Green Eggs and Ham, maybe the Lorax). The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins is a lot less likely to be on the radar.

Personally, I think of oobleck as the science-for-kids goop first. I'd forgotten its Seussian source.

[Nate the Great]

The 500 Hats is a classic. One of my favorites is the very first Seuss kid's book, And to Think That I Saw it On Mulberry Street.

[mudshark]

It's not obscure to a Seuss fan, but it would be to most people. Only a few of Seuss's books have reached the level of pop-culture icon (The Cat in the Hat, The Grinch, Green Eggs and Ham, maybe the Lorax). The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins is a lot less likely to be on the radar.
Pop-culture radar, hmmm. Don't think that had been invented yet.

In the days before the Chuck Jones Grinch was on TV every year (from Mulberry Street [1937] to Fox in Socks [1965], say) they were all just Dr. Seuss books. More people would have been able to recite from Green Eggs and Ham, most likely, but not by any sort of staggering margin. Bartholomew and the Oobleck would have been just one of the books, not particularly more obscure than any of the others.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins is a lot less likely to be on the radar.

I brought The 500 Hats home from the school library in Grade 2, and Mum went nuts. She'd remembered it from when she was a schoolgirl, way back when.

[mudshark]

Personally, I think of oobleck as the science-for-kids goop first. I'd forgotten its Seussian source.
Ohwait,...

...this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XQ97XHjVw)?

Edit:

Nothing whatsoever to do with Oobleck, but here's another clip (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2134266654801392897&q=Caesium) from the same guys, I think. (Sa'ar should like this.)

[Nate the Great]

Is Bartholemew the only Seuss main character (other than The Cat, of course), to get more than one book? I'm not counting the minor Seuss creatures, just the main (roughly) humanoid characters.

Ah, the old cornstarch routine. Liquid if moved softly, stiff if moved quickly.

Is it just me, or do my threads tend to mutate at a faster rate than the average ones?

Oh, and how did everyone like the live-action Seuss remakes? They can't hold a candle to the original cartoons, of course, but as plots that stand on their own.